The Emptiness Inside
by mirrorOfsin
Summary: He needs her back and he can't begin to explain why but it matters a great deal. Whole series and post-MJ. Notes inside. Warnings for language and some slight sexual content.


**A/N:** Shifting time - so it mores from present to past and then back to present.

Warnings for language and some sexual content.

The Emptiness Inside

He is used to seeing her face from time to time when he flicks through the channels. Depending on his mood, sometimes he sits and watches her, occasionally muting it and just observing her face, her eyes. Then sometimes he skips passed her quickly, hardly baring to see that face, _those eyes_. There has always been something about her that gets under his skin. Even from the beginning he knew that she wasn't like the other Captiol girls despite how much she tried to be. He knew she was just a superficial and frivolous but sometimes, when he was sober enough to notice, he saw moments where she seemed to have some consciousness outside of her own pretentious world.

Now he catches sight of her on the catch-up highlights of President Paylor's birthday celebration which also serves as a celebration for a year after the Rebellion. She isn't aware that she is being filmed and her eyes have that distant look he knows only too well as she turns her head away. He feels a slow burning ache in his chest and then switches the television off, engulfing the room in darkness. Then he's on his feet, stumbling in the dark until he finds the phone and dials without even thinking. It rings until he's through to voicemail. He knows that she's there though, despite it being nearly three in the morning. Judging by that look he saw, he knew tonight would be a night of very little sleep for her.

He leaves just a simple message and doesn't bother to even say his name. She'll know easily enough, after all no one else calls at this time except him.

_When are you coming back? _

He doesn't know that she has packed up her bags already prepared to come back. She has been away for too long.

**-/-**

They always argued a lot, especially when they first met and his behaviour or words insulted her sensibilities which made him angry when she began to lecture him. Some days they would not speak at all, she hid away in her clothes and bright friends as he drank himself to oblivion. But he remembers when she cleaned up after him, bringing him water and pills to help the next morning and making sure that he was at least half sober when it came to meeting sponsors or the rare times he was interviewed.

He might have outwardly claimed to dislike her, make fun of her and call her everything under the sun when he was drunk but sometimes he was capable of behaving almost kindly towards her. But she just infuriated him with her chatter about such silly things. He wanted grab her by her shoulders and shake her. Shake sense into her and make her see the world for what it was and not for what she thought it should be. In the darkest corner of his mind, he wanted to hurt her. Just enough so she would feel something close to what he felt. He didn't know why he wanted her to understand, he never thought about it too much either, all he knew was that it seemed to matter.

He had seen her cry once in her second year working with him when both of District 12's children were brutally killed. Both tributes had been very young and Effie had taken more care than usual with them. They both knew that neither had stood a chance but still she hoped as he never had any to begin with. He stood up off the seat, picked up a bottle of whiskey and looked at her.

"Don't care," he told her and left her clutching the fabric of her blue skirt in her fists as her tears continued to fall.

Just as _stay alive_ where the words he said to the children they sent into the games every year, the words between them, _don't care_, were thought every time she called out the names. But becoming attached was inevitable. Especially with the younger ones that looked to her for help when he couldn't – which was most of the time. But he never saw her cry again though he knew that she did. She just didn't let him see it and he preferred that. He hated her tears more than her false smiles because they reminded him that she could feel.

**-/-**

The 72nd Games changed things. It seemed that the gamemakers were being particularly sadistic in this one and after watching gruelling hours of children fighting, he couldn't stand it anymore. It made him angry, so angry that it was easy to direct it all at her because she was Capitol and that's all that mattered. He doesn't remember exactly how it started, what he said to make her eyes flash but it was enough and he kept going. And she didn't back down. They were shouting at each other, blaming each other and hurting each other and it gave him a perverse thrill that he fed off. He managed to back her up against the wall and for a brief moment thought how very easy it would be to kill her. Her eyes widened as his thoughts must have been clear on his face and he saw it in her eyes.

_Fear_.

The sudden wave of guilt was unexpected and so was the confusion. He didn't want this but he didn't move and she waited, barely breathing as he only moved closer to rest his head against the wall by her right ear. His breath fell hotly against her neck and he could smell that delicate scent of jasmine that surrounded her. By now her hand had moved to rest on his chest as if to push him away but she made no attempt. He should back off now, leave her alone before something stupid or dangerous happened. But he never listened to sense.

"Haymitch," she whispered and he shook his head. He didn't want her to speak and when she did again he covered her mouth with his hand. She yanked it off, her nails bit into his skin and she started to fight him but he stopped her again by pressing his mouth against hers. She froze, her limbs locked and her eyes widened impossibly so. He kissed her again and then again till he felt her lips tremble and then she kissed him back.

They weren't loving kisses. No, they were still too filled up with anger and pain but it heated their blood and he couldn't breathe at the intensity that swept him. He pinned her to the wall, each wrist enclosed in his tight grip and he kissed her lips fiercely, making sure to bruise them so she wouldn't forget. He hissed when she bit his bottom lip, a small look of triumph on her face when he glared at her and for that tightened his hold on her wrists so that there would be his marks on her delicate skin.

He grounded his hips into hers, her panted breath urging him on and he wanted to lose himself in her. To just fuck and not think about anything else. She raised up a leg to tilt herself up and groaned at the new fiction it created.

But then he stopped, untangling their limbs and stumbled away. He couldn't do this, he couldn't just use her because even he knew it was wrong to do so. She leaned heavily against the wall, bemused at his withdrawal and also incredibly ashamed that she let him do that. They stared at one another before she straightened herself and tugged her dress trying to regain as much dignity that she could.

"I despise you, Haymitch Abernathy," she told him as she left the room and he didn't bother to reply.

He found a new bottle of whiskey and unscrewed the top, downing a huge gulp. He could still taste her, her plum lipstick that tasted so fake he wondered why he craved to taste more.

**-/-**

He wasn't surprised when she chose to pretend it never happened. Really, it was better that way but it didn't mean that he didn't think about it. In fact he thought about it too much and sometimes he caught her eye and knew that she still thought about it too. It's not a new thing, many mentors and victors have often fucked each other. It's not really approved of but it still goes on. In fact, they are possibly the only ones who haven't. But he knows her, she's not just a one-time girl and he doesn't think he would want that either.

But now they have sparked it's only a matter of time before they burned and, _oh god_, when they did, it's such pain and ecstasy. It began as something just to take the edge off, to feel something and, if truth be told, to pass the time. Then it slowly changed when kisses were filled with hints of kindness, when touches were to comfort as much as they were to excite. When she lay curled at his side and soothed him as he screamed as the nightmares came just before the dawn.

In the harsh light of the day he could still say that he hates her and she could still insult him for his lack of manners. But at night, when everything was stripped back right down and they see each other with the clearest eyes, they know the truth and the words that they will never say.

**-/-**

"We can't find her."

He doesn't move for a moment as the words slowly registered then he looked at Plutarch with burning eyes.

"She is alive and we _will_ find her."

"You don't know for certain-"

"Just find her," he said in a dangerously low voice. Plutarch gave him a look as if to say why? Why was it so important to find the former-escort for District 12? A woman from the Capitol that lead how many children to their deaths? Why did he care?

Haymitch doesn't answer any of these questions. He needs her back and he can't begin to explain why but it matters a great deal.

**-/-**

There are faint scars on her back that he has memorised with his fingers and lips. She knows his own scars well enough and can find them on him blindly. He runs his finger over one that curves down her left shoulder blade and she twitches then settles.

When she had appeared he had thought that, for a moment, he was hallucinating, the alcohol messing with his brain but then her kiss was so fierce and so were her scrambling fingers and desperate sounds and he knew that she was real. That she had come back.

He doesn't remember going to up to his bedroom, _their bedroom_, or even undressing but he remembers how it felt to have her against him, to be inside her and have her suddenly all around him. To feel as if he could let go and it would be alright.

They keep the curtains closed to maintain some of the darkness that they need. To hold off the day and the ticking clocks so that they just simply exist. And it is in this darkness, hidden under the covers with her body shaped against his, he realises how much needs Effie Trinket because she was the only one that could fill the emptiness inside.

_fin._

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**A/N:** reviews are very much appreciated.


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